Thursday, September 01, 2005

They can get them to the polls, but not out of harm's way....

I'm listening to Rush Limbaugh right now talk about how the Louisiana politicians could get the poor masses onto buses to ride to the polls on Election Day, but couldn't evacuate them for the hurricane.
That led me to the following excerpt from a Robert Novak article:

On Election Day 1996, mid-afternoon exit polls showed State Rep. Woody Jenkins with a clear advantage against Landrieu to become the state's first Republican senator of the 20th century. Also threatened was local option for video poker and riverboat casinos. Gambling interests immediately dispatched a convoy of buses to New Orleans' predominantly black housing projects after 5 p.m. to recruit voters. The gambling industry saved itself and Mary Landrieu.

Makes you wonder how they could react so quickly in that instance, but not do more in this case before tragedy struck........

It is certainly true that whenever the democrats are in charge, the rule is never discuss what they might have done wrong or better before the entire incident is forgotten and buried in the metro section of the newspaper.

On the other hand, it is never too early for a Kennedy to blame the republicans for the hurricane, for Landrieu to blame the President, for the anti-war crowd to complain about guard troops in Iraq, or about how this administration didn't send New Orleans enough of our tax dollars for them to rebuild all of their levies.

Goes right along with the looters blaming the people who run the stores for having the audacity to have successfully set up and run a business, thus "oppressing" them.

The sad truth is that people focus on what is important. And before the hurricane hit, the leaders of Louisiana and New Orleans simply did not think it was important enough to fire up the thousands of school buses in the state and drive downtown to pick up all the stragglers -- we can hope because they simply didn't believe that it would be necessary.

I dont' doubt that if they had it to do over again they would spend the 20 million they say they needed to finish up the levy work (how many billions has Virginia spent of its own money when we couldn't get federal dollars?), would have ordered an evacuation earlier, would have sent buses to take people away, would have had pre-staged real equipment and material that would have worked to seal levies, and would have spent money to put solid waterproof walls around all the pumps to keep them from flooding.

We can't fault them for finding a lot better things to spend their money and time on -- after all, up until now they hadn't had a problem.

Add Clinton adviser Sidney Blumenthal's article in a German newspaper blaming Bush for the flooding of New Orleans to RFK, Jr.'s insane diatribe that a Haley Barbour memo to Bush 41 caused Hurricane Katrina.